Greetings from down under. Quick intro: I've been supporting windows systems for the past six years and am a full-fledged geek spending more time than I would like to admit on a computer versus other pursuits. I've been using windows since 2001 and cannot say that I'm one of those who had horrible experiences with it. The only bad experiences that I had were with Windows ME, but otherwise I've been lucky with windows as it always clicked and I just got it.

My first experience with Linux was back in 2001 when i downloaded the iso for redhat and installed it on my computer. Didn't stick with it as I was messing around with graphic design and photoshop had me won over. Since then I've dabbled with ubuntu, damn small linux, and even fedora. Recently I have decided that I would like to learn some linux skills and the best way to do so was to use it on a day to day basis. I went to the deep end and started with arch and after lots of headaches and pain I got an install working up to the point of installing X. For various reasons I tried debian testing but after messing around with that I decided to get a proper start and try linux mint. My research indicated that mint would provide me a good beginner experience without the "bad habits" that ubuntu could teach me. Installed it this past weekend and so far mint has won me over. The gui is beautiful (running cinnamon) and it has been very easy. Looking forward to getting into the command line and bash scripting soon. Don't know where I will end up, but I think this time around I will stick with it as it does what I need. I consider myself an OS agnostic, so I won't say that linux is the bees knees and I'll never go back to windows or os x. However, that may change with time. At the moment, I am enjoying the ride and am looking forward to gaining some skills that will make me marketable in my career. Word on the street is that linux admins are scarce these days, so I hope to use that to my advantage! Thanks for reading!

Hi Apoc220, welcome to the Linux Mint forums Thanks for joining the forums!

Be sure also to check out the Community website (tutorials, hardware and software reviews, ideas), and the Cinnamon Spices website for adding even more themes, applets and extensions to Cinnamon.

You can also chat in real-time with other Linux Mint users. In the Mint Menu, in the Internet section, start the application XChat IRC. You will automatically get connected to #linuxmint-chat for general chat and #linuxmint-help for support with other Linux Mint users.

I used to be a M$ sysadmin - looking after a couple of hundered servers in racks as well as loose (! i.e. in offices) but even then was dabbling in the Linux side.I have been Linux only for about 6 years now, don't really miss all the "issues" with m$ servers. (mind you I haven't been working for that long either )